Liars and Thieves
by Last of the Lilac Wine
Summary: Neal/OC. Neal wakes up in the very world he'd been attempting to run from his whole life with the one woman who'd almost ruined them all.
1. Prologue

**A/N **For the purposes of this fic, in 2x22, Emma and Neal never admitted their feelings towards one another before Neal fell through the portal. I've always been a massive fan of the characters of Emma and Neal, but I think the pair in a relationship together doesn't necessarily bring out the best in either of them. Obviously this fic won't be contingent with Season 3 of _Once Upon A Time_ when it comes out, making it non-canon.

* * *

**LIARS AND THIEVES**

* * *

**PROLOGUE**

* * *

Maria suddenly felt sand being ground into her hair and face and her fingers clawed at broken fragments of shells as the sea forced her body up and onto land.

Waves pummeled onto her back and she realized her face was still half-submerged in water.

"Jesus Christ," she coughed out, pulling herself up onto her hands and knees above the line of surf. Her dripping brown hair hung in thick ropes around her face, and she pushed the tangled mess back, looking around her.

She was knelt in about four inches of sea water. There was a strip of beach a couple of meters in front of her, and fringing that was a long line of trees.

_Where the hell am I? _

She stood on weak, shaky legs. Her body had been pummeled by the relentless waves and there were bloody cuts all over her palms and up the left side of her face. Despite the wounds being relatively small, the salt from the sea water made them sting like a bitch.

Her eyes were burning too, and she wiped her running nose on the sleeve of her coat, looking around her.

Her gaze was instantly attracted to the dark form in the water a little way away from her. To begin with, she thought it was a branch, but then she realized that the branch had arms and legs.

Whoever it was, they were face down in the water and they weren't moving.

"Shit," she muttered, realizing who it was. "Neal?" she yelled, high stepping waves as she splashed back through the water and out to sea. It was so damn cold that it felt like she'd had an epidural; there was no feeling below her waist. "_Neal_?"

She grabbed the back of his coat, hauling him up so that her body weight supported his. "Stand up," she said, shaking him. "C'mon, Neal. Stand up. Stand up."

His eyes remained closed, and she looked round desperately, seeing the blood swirling in the water around him.

She began to remember.

* * *

Maria received the anonymous call on a Thursday afternoon.

Her credibility at _The New Yorker _had dropped to zero after the Booker-Jacobs fiasco, so she'd been bumped back down the ladder to writing articles on the quality of drinking water in the city. She'd usually ignore the phone, but she'd picked it up that day for the hell of it, because – really – did she have anything better to do?

It was funny how fate worked.

"Maria Kaufmann?" the male voice on the other end of the line asked, as soon as she picked up.

"Yeah?"

"The journalist, Maria Kaufmann?"

"Listen, if this is another jumped up attorney who wants to sue me for my uncredible source use again, before you do, can I just say that thanks to the Booker and Jacobs trial I have lost my _house_, my _life savings _and my _boyfriend_. So before you, I don't know, decide to sue me for everything else I have, can I just inform you that I have absolutely _nothing_ left to give."

"I'm not an attorney."

"Then who the hell are you?"

"Someone who wants to give you your credibility back."

The fire that had burned up in her began to cool and she calmed a little. "How?" she asked, intrigued.

The man ignored her question. "I actually phoned you _because _of the publicity of what happened with you and the corporation owned by Mark Jacobs and David Booker. You lost the story because you refused to reveal who the people were who gave you the information that led you to the two men."

"I always protect my sources."

"That's why I chose you."

"For _what_?" she pushed, frustrated. She swiveled round in her chair to glance about the office, making sure no-one was eavesdropping. What the man said next, however, made her freeze completely.

"I have a story for you. One that could make you famous."

"How famous are we talking?" she said, suspiciously. "Dynamite under my car-seat when I drive home famous? Because if you're looking for a journalist to blow the whistle on some state secret that you've popped the lid on, you're barking up the wrong tree, buddy."

"I can't tell you what it is now. I need to meet you. Tomorrow"

Maria paused.

The last time she'd tried to play hero-reporter, she'd gone up against a coast-to-coast firm with lawyers who had flayed every last dollar out of her in court.

"If I did this," she said, eventually. "If I agreed to do this, I'd need a guarantee; nobody would come after me. I can pull the plug whenever I want to. I won't get hurt."

"Of course."

"Then where am I going?"

"A town called Storybrooke."

* * *

Despite all circumstances, Maria had to laugh darkly.

_Nobody will come after me. _

_I can pull the plug whenever I want to. _

_I won't get hurt. _

"You idiot," she aloud to herself.

Neal's body was still a dead-weight in her arms and she quickly stripped both of them of their heavy, sodden woolen coats. It meant the she was freezing, but at least it made it easier to tote him out of the sea and up onto the beach.

She laid their coats down and rolled Neal onto them.

He was still unconscious, despite all the movement it had required to get him up onto the sand. "Don't be dead," she muttered. "Do _not_ be dead."

There was blood seeping through his shirt now that there was no water to wash it away with; like a red poppy she watched it bloom for a second, mixing with the dampness of his shirt so that it grew to cover almost the entire expanse of his chest.

The irony of the situation was not lost on Maria as she set to work on checking his pulse and breathing.

But she had to do something to prevent herself from thinking about what the hell had just happened.

* * *

"Should have been a god damn nurse like your mother wanted you to be, Maria," Maria scolded herself. She'd been trekking through the woods for almost an hour now, and she was seriously re-evaluating her choice in career as she almost twisted her ankle on a fallen branch.

At least she wouldn't have been given dead-end leads by mysterious strangers over the phone. At least she wouldn't be so desperate as to agree to go to a town that (and she quoted) 'wasn't technically there.'

Was that the big story? That map publishers had omitted to print the location of a town that, just by its very name, sounded like it had come straight out of a five-year-olds idea of story book?

And Maria wouldn't blame them. _Storybrooke_. She snorted. It had about the subtlety of a hammer to the face.

The trees in the woods began to thin out and Maria found herself at the edge of a small clearing that held a well. Next to it stood a man and a woman.

Unlike her, they were dressed for hiking. The woman was dark skinned and athletic-looking, dressed in trainers and a hoody and the man next to her was balding slightly, wearing a plaid shirt.

"Greg Mendell?" Maria asked, stepping forwards.

He nodded. "Maria Kaufmann?"

She indicated the affirmative and he smiled, walking towards her with his hand outstretched. She shook it. "So," she said, glancing between the pair. "You said over the phone you had the exposé of the century for me." She didn't attempt to keep the skepticism out of her voice. "This better be worth me booking it down to Maine on my day off."

The woman's mouth twisted into a smirk and Maria decided pretty quickly there was something about her she didn't like. "It's well worth your time, Miss Kaufmann, we can assure you."

She raised an eyebrow, looking at Greg. "So?"

He took out his phone, tapping a few options on it and then handing it over to her. "Watch this."

She accepted the phone, her interest piqued despite herself. Greg had loaded up a video onto its small screen, and when she tapped play, Maria found herself watching a black haired woman 'levitate' some objects out of a bag.

It was finished in almost five seconds, and when the screen went black, Maria felt irritation at them and annoyance at herself boil up with in her. "You dragged me down here to watch some dodgy CGI _magic trick_?!" she snapped.

"Except it's not CGI," said Greg, smoothly. He took the phone away from her and loaded up another video, placing it back in her hands.

This time, Maria watched the same black haired woman rip a girl's heart out.

She felt her face drain of color and she looked up at Greg very slowly. "And it's not magic tricks per say," he added, very calmly. "…as you know them."

* * *

There was noise of people approaching and Maria whipped round abruptly. Three figures were running across the sand towards her. One male, two female.

The man reached them first, sinking to his knees next to her. Despite everything, Maria felt herself stare. It wasn't that the he was incredibly good-looking (though there was that, too) it was the fact that he was wearing full, medieval body armor.

"What happened? Is he alright?"

Maria stared at him. "Who _are_ you?"

"Prince Philip –"

She was aware that he was speaking to her, but suddenly, she couldn't see. The space between her eyes and the three strangers was washed red, like the blood pounding so loudly in her ears that she did not hear the man questioning her with increasing concern. Maria would have staggered if she was standing upright, but instead her body simply folded, unable to hold itself upright, and she found herself lying on the ground next to Neal, her eyes staring into his slack, unconscious face.

She thought of the sailors who had set out hundreds of years ago to explore the world. How terrified they must have been when they checked their maps and realized they risked falling over the edge; how amazed they'd been to discover, instead, an entirely different world.

_Where am I? _she thought desperately, her hand curling into the sand as if to anchor herself.

_Where am I?_

_Where am I?_

_Where am I?_

* * *

It was, without a doubt, the biggest story of her life.

It was also the most bewildering, confusing and scariest thing that had ever happened to her.

It was time to pull the plug.

Maria walked into her room in Granny's Bed and Breakfast at 7.30 after a week of staying in Storybrooke. She had booked the room under the name Jane Porter (an intentional nod to Tarzan) under the pretense of being a fairytale character looking for a different place to live. _Acting like and insider can be enough to actually be one_. It had been one of the first rules she'd learnt as a free-lance journalist.

She locked the door behind her and began to pack up her stuff. Her laptop was laid out on the table, the screen aglow with the word document of her recently-finished report. 300 words. Accurate and to the point. Readers would only look at the pictures, anyhow. And the name of the journalist who'd managed to unearth the story.

She glanced round at the homey room that was costing her 70 dollars a night.

420 dollars for the week. It was money that, until _The New Yorker _broke the story, she didn't have.

It had all worked out so perfectly, though. Normally, when somebody blew the whistle on something this big, you were expected to ditch your whole family and hole up in an embassy somewhere until the political or corporation moguls who wanted your hide had given up on the search. But the occupants of this town wouldn't come after her. Not because they wouldn't want to, but because they literally _couldn't_.

Maria hurled another jumper into the open duffel bag and then walked to the desk and grabbed her mobile.

"Greg," she greeted, after dialing his number; absently reviewing the word document on the laptop before her as she had done so many times that week. _It was perfect_. "I'm leaving town."

"_What_?" he sounded distracted – angry?

Maria frowned. "I've got everything I need. The article's finished. I'm getting out of this town before these people come after me with pitchforks and torches."

"It's a bit too late for that."

It took a second for Maria to realize that the voice had not come through the speaker's on her phone; was not Greg's; and had come from somewhere behind her.

She whirled round just in time to see a man with brown hair standing across the room before he rushed forwards, knocking her so that she was bent painfully backwards over the desk – her head hitting it so hard that her vision blurred momentarily.

There was no chance of her fighting back. He had to have about twenty or thirty pounds on her and he was using his whole body weight to pin her back against the desk. She could feel the uncomfortable pressure of his hips pushing hers back into the lip of the table and the position would have looked sexual had his forearm not been braced across neck, almost choking her.

The laptop was open, just inches from her face, she realized. He must have seen her glance at it, because he looked too and then his expression darkened, and he forced his arm a little more roughly against her throat. She cried out.

"Is this it?" he asked. "This is what you're doing here? You're a reporter?"

_Damn, damn, damn. _She didn't answer. It was obvious.

Her left hand was still gripped tightly round her phone, her right arm pinned underneath his chest.

"What's your name?"

"Jane Porter."

"Don't pull that on me. I checked the list of every person in this town and you're not on it. _What's your name_?"

"Maria Kaufmann," she rasped out, struggling to regulate her breathing.

"What have you done with Regina?"

Maria blinked. Honestly thrown for a second. This was not what she had expected. "What?"

"_Regina. _She's gone. All the evidence points towards you. _Where is she_?"

_All the evidence points towards – _Maria froze. Realization hit her. _Greg Mendell you bastard. _

"I don't know where she is," she said, trying to talk calmly and rationally. "It wasn't me, but I think I know who did it."

He lifted his eyebrows, and Maria suddenly remembered his name. Neal. Neal Cassidy. "I'm not buying that, I'm sorry."

Her fingers unfurled round the phone. It dropped to the floor with a dull _thud_ and then her hand curled into a fist. "Me too," she said, striking him in the side of the head as hard as she could.

* * *

"Mulan, help me pick him up – Aurora, get the woman."

Maria felt gentle hands shaking her softly, yet urgently. She felt gritty, uncomfortable sand on her skin and down the neck of her shirt. She tasted bile in the back of her throat.

Neal was suddenly lifted away from her line of vision and she rolled over onto her back, staring up into the sky. "Where am I?" she rasped, voicing the question that was turning dizzily through her mind, over and over.

"The Enchanted Forest," a pleasant sounding, young woman's voice answered. The owner of the voice appeared in her line of vision several seconds later, and a hand touched her shoulder; light as a breath. "Come on, you have to get up."

Maria didn't move. "Can you save him?" she whispered.

"Maybe, but you have to come with us now."

She stood slowly. Her muddy, wet jeans and black shirt stuck to her as she moved. She probably looked a mess.

Up ahead the man – Philip – and the woman he'd addressed as Mulan were supporting Neal's weight between them as they carried him across the beach. Maria had loved the Disney film Mulan. She'd watched it with her little sister when she went back to visit her family in Boston.

_Of all the thing's that had to happen to me as a consequence of taking up Greg Mendell on that damn article, of all the places I could have gone. Why here? Why me? Who dreamt up this sick joke? The universe? _

Maria felt like she could cry.

* * *

"You set me up."

It had not taken Maria long to jump into her car and speed down to the cannery. She'd cornered Tamara in a deserted corridor and the black haired woman now had a pistol leveled on her forehead. (Ironic) righteous indigence and fury, however, meant that Maria only stared back at her with out fear.

"What gave us away?" Tamara asked smoothly, with out care.

"Well for starters. Greg, and his reputation in this town for being an addictive blogger. A guy with a story that good wouldn't wait around to hire a failed journalist to spread the story for him. You needed me to distract the town so that you could, what, abduct its inhabitants?"

"Destroy magic."

"I'll also bet you're the one who goes round telling kids that Santa isn't real."

Tamara's eyes narrowed. "Magic has no place in our world," she said, slowly. "It's not natural."

"So why hire me to show it to the world when you're going to snatch it away again? More to the point, why hire me for the sole fact that I don't disclose my sources? What the hell does that gain you?"

"Nothing. I'm not doing this for myself - I'm not Greg - this was never about me, this was about the greater good. I'm doing this for _everyone_."

Maria's eyes widened. "Jesus," she whispered. "You think you're some kind of martyr, don't you?"

Tamara didn't reply.

_She's crazy, _Maria thought, when her eyes flickered back to the gun that Tamara had trained on her. _Both of them are._

For the first time, and with terrifying clarity, Maria realized she was out of her depth. That she'd been roped into some grand-master scheme far greater than herself. Far greater than the world she lived in.

_Nobody will come after me. _

_I can pull the plug whenever I want to. _

_I won't get hurt. _

She repeated the empty promise in her head, as if saying it enough times would make it true.

Tamara flicked the safety off on the gun with an audible click. "It was very perceptive of you to figure this out, Miss Kaufmann. Unfortunately for you, when you hire someone, it's for a purpose, and when that purpose is gone…" her face formed a fake, apologetic smile, "…well, so are you."

Maria threw herself to the side just in time, her head striking the ground. The sound of the gun going off was louder than she thought it would be. It rang in her ears and her head spun.

On the floor, with her palms skinned and bleeding, she looked up to see the ghost of Tamara hover in her darkened vision. She felt something cool pressed up against her forehead – the end of a pistol.

_You're going to die, _she told herself.

_Crissakes, was the article worth _this_? Your life? _

Somebody spoke – an echo, to her brain. The gun was removed and Maria saw blurs of people moving. Another gunshot.

_Go. _She screamed at herself. _Leave!_

She tried to move, but her head was still spinning. The ground seemed to open up in a vortex of green, and Maria wondered for a second if it was her mind conjuring it up – in the same way it was conjuring up the blur of Emma holding onto Neal as he dangled precariously over the lightening-green abyss.

_This isn't possible_.

Tamara appeared above her, and Maria felt herself being shoved, and then there was a terrible sensation of falling.

All around her, there was swirling green and Maria realized she was about to pay for the knowledge that magic existed in this world with her life.

* * *

**A/N **Please leave a review if you would like to read more!

_Last Of The Lilac Wine_


	2. Note

**NOTE**

* * *

I have not given up on this story. I thought about continuing it, and making this fic 'AU', but I decided that I wanted to stay true to the Once Upon A Time plot line. For that reason, I'm waiting until Season 3 airs to continue with this - so it'll only be a month or so until the next update.

Thank you to everyone that has reviewed and expressed and interest in '**Liars and Thieves**', I really appreciate it!

- Last Of The Lilac Wine (September 1st)


	3. The Heart Of The Truest Believer: Part 1

**LIARS AND THIEVES**

* * *

**THE HEART OF THE TRUEST BELIEVER: PART 1**

* * *

Mulan sat with the heels of her boots dug into the stony debris of the castle around her, surveying the surrounding land below with a quick and practiced eye. Her sword was a heavy-weight on her right hip. Her elbows rested on her knees. The armor she wore was an oppressive but familiar density surrounding her body and bearing down on her shoulders. It had been her father's, as a young man. After his death, tradition dictated it should have passed on to his closest male heir – but it was hers.

The sun would be up for another hour – two, at most – and the shadow of the ridge of trees and sandy desert fell out below her like an unfurled map. Far to the south was the Enchanted Forest. There was a river that forked off a little in front of the castle; one to the east the other, the north west. One ran dry a few miles on, the other led to the sea and the beach where they'd had found _them_.

Mulan sighed and straightened upright. She'd been crouched at the top of the rubble on the stone steps for almost an hour but the muscles in her legs gave little in the way of protest.

She inhaled and shut her eyes briefly. This was a mental state she often obtained to calm her mind and she would be free: free of doubts and limits, free to focus on nothing else but what she chose. Gypsy fortune-tellers and Zen masters, would, she expected, understand the feeling. Ancient warriors of her land had long employed the tactic before going in battle, ritualistically accepting their impending death so they could focus unencumbered by fear. It was a tactic taught through generations – a tactic she had taught Phillip when they had first met.

She heard him approaching from behind her and opened her eyes. She knew the exact sound the weight and span his footfalls would produce, it was the distance that was uncertain.

"She's awake."

He was next to her. She didn't look at him, staring out at the country in its pre-twilight solitude. "Does she understand what happened to her?" she asked, quietly.

"A little. I'd say she's got a pretty good idea…not the whole picture, but enough."

"And the man?"

"Still asleep."

Mulan's hand twitched upwards to her face – as if to reach for the veil that was normally there – but her fingers only touched the skin of her cheek. She flinched at the smooth vulnerability of the sensation, the warm pulse of blood underneath flesh. With the veil, she had been nobody and nothing; part of a greater unit of soldiers, all joined in the anonymity of their appearance and the shared experiences of battles fought and lost. With out the veil, she was recognizably Mulan. She was the daughter of an estranged diplomat. A woman. Weak.

"You shouldn't have hidden behind the veil for as long as you did."

"It was who I was," she returned, her voice stiff with clarity. Philip's naiveté as a Prince sometimes annoyed her. When she turned to him, his eyes were regarding her; boyishly wide, with the old hidden wisdom of a seasoned general. She liked his eyes, and she liked the fact that he was so tall; a strange and respectable combination of intelligence and sheer bulk. But he could also be annoyingly tenacious with arguments and too preoccupied with peripheral concepts like feelings. Whist Philip had spent the early years of his life with a silver spoon in his mouth, Mulan had watched as her country was crippled by war and witnessed salaries that refused to rise with the tax imposed on them by distant kings. But status, as in any traditional, class-conscious society, declined more slowly than wealth, and so Mulan's family had watched, clinging to their traditions and their honor and their status, with out a penny to their name. "My enemies expected strength when they saw my veil," she continued, bitterly. "They expected death. When they look at me now they expect weakness."

"Clearly these enemies choose not to look at your formidable armor and sword," Phillip teased.

She didn't reply. And he sighed. The teasing quality was still present in his voice, along with something slightly more brooding and darker. "Besides," he said, "I don't think they would be seeing a woman once they've got your knife in their gut."

A smile flitted across her face at that.

* * *

Before Maria opened her eyes, she had a brief, spasmodic view of an old life, in another world…another time.

As Maria's last name precluded, she had not always lived in America.

Until she was almost fourteen, through the eighties and into the early nineties, she had grown up in the totalitarian state of East Berlin.

Her father had worked as an accountant and her mother did a few odd-jobs like filing for an insurance firm. Though criticism was not really an option in the GDR, her father had quietly rebelled against the Communist regime, causing a frequent array of arguments in the Kaufmann household between his far more apathetic wife and his eldest daughter – Maria - a notorious playground fist-fighter.

Maria's first memories, then, were of failing, big boxy heaters round the house, and having to walk round in two or three jumpers, even when indoors. She could remember an old-fashioned, chipped bath tub that the two Kaufmann girls were allowed to use three times a week and the stacks of her mother's paperback books in corridor's – books she and a friend, Tommy Weiner, had once sold to the second-hand shop round the corner for three Marks each. That was the only time Maria's mother had ever hit her.

This all sounded bad, but she could never remember minding the discomforts. The Wall was overbearing but also – somehow – strangely reassuring.

The briefest snapshot of a memory Maria had before waking was of when it had come down when she was eight, in 1989. Her father had handed her a brick and she could remember the feel of it; like a deadweight in her arms. She had felt sad – though at that age she hadn't been able to identify why: her childhood memories now were of a world that no longer existed. That brick had served as a reminder that a world could come crumbling down like the GDR itself – struggling with the same opposing set of ideals that eventually tore a country apart.

Thirty-one years old and she thought about that over everything else.

Hilarious…

A lurching tide of voices sloshed over the hull of Maria's hearing and she allowed herself to open her eyes, pulling her mind's eye away from crumbling walls and fuzzy childhood memories.

Briefly, her vision was filled with a snowstorm of blinding light and then the girl from the beach came into focus above her and she blanched.

"Where am I?" Maria blurted, her heart instantly going into full-on panic palpitations as she remembered falling through a green portal. Her face felt crusty with dried sea water; the sun spun out above her through a watery-pale sky.

"It's alright," the girl said, soothingly, as Maria struggled upright. "You're fine. You're in the Enchanted Forest."

Maria stopped examining the bandages wrapped round the palms of her hands and took in the girls elaborate hair-do and dress. She raised an eyebrow. "And why the hell am I getting the evening news from a Disney princess?"

She frowned, recoiling slightly at the bite in Maria's tone. "I don't think I'm a part of this race of people you call 'Disney', but I am a princess. My name's Aurora."

"Okay, then," Maria said, sarcastically, "than it must be true."

"But it is," she said, frowning and looking slightly hurt. She set the glass of water she'd been holding back onto the bed-side table and took a step back. "You're in the Enchanted Forest."

_No_. Thought Maria, looking around at the ruined castle and the bed she lay on. _No, no, no, no, no_.

She remembered the portal. Tamara. Greg's betrayal.

Maria scrambled out of the bed and onto her feet. She saw now that behind the girl was the woman that had called herself Mulan and Prince Phillip in those god-awful costumes.

"Tell me how to get home," she demanded.

"You can't –" began Phillip.

Her heart constricted. "_Tell me how to get back to Earth you frigging morons!_" German slipped out of her mouth as naturally as English for the first time in years. Her panic was like a lump of coal lodged soundly in the bottom of her stomach and in her throat.

Mulan stepped forwards, her eyes narrowed, her hand touching the hilt of a knife strapped to her belt. _A knife_. "Speak English."

"_Fuck_," Maria snarked, still in German. Her hands balled into fists at her side. "_A donkey._"

"We're _trying _to help you!" snapped Philip in frustration.

Maria didn't care; their words weren't even truly registering to her brain. She was about ninety-nine percent sure she was going to vomit. This whole situation was _bizarre_…impossible. Her heart was beating so rapidly she thought she might choke on it.

Was this karma for taking up the news story? If it was, it was over-kill of the highest degree.

She looked at the castle, the cheesy medieval costumes and impossibly beautiful faces.

None of this happened. This wasn't really happening.

* * *

Neal woke on an uncomfortably hard bed. There was light. The sound of voices.

He turned his face on the pillow to look at a black-haired woman in armor standing over him. "What's your name?" the woman said.

"Neal," he rasped. His skin buzzed. Immortality felt like it was ebbing away with the presence of reality. His left side felt like it had been hit by a high-speed bullet…probably because it had. Tamara…_Tamara _had shot him. Emma was gone.

He didn't have enough inside of him to vomit.

They had never talked it all through, never talked about why it was his 'fault' – and, fuck, hadn't eleven years and a Curse and the appearance of fairytale characters come up with a better word than 'fault'. Fate sounded too harsh. Fate was supposed to bring people together, not constantly tear them apart. They had never discussed the 'I love you', prison, Henry – Emma had always been capable of skirting round a subject.

Thinking about Henry hurt way too much.

"Relax. You're safe. The woman you came here with woke up a little before you did –"

Neal's heart stopped.

But he had let her go. He had sacrificed himself to make sure they both didn't fall through. One of them needed to stay to look after Henry. He had to have a parent. "_Emma_?" he choked out.

"You know Emma?" the woman in the armor asked, sharply.

"She's my…my…" he looked around wildly. "Where is she, is she okay?"

Her expression softened. She looked at the younger girl and the man and then back at Neal. "Her name isn't Emma. It's Maria."

"…Maria?"

"Your friend? The doctor Maria Kaufmann?" said the girl chipped in, obviously trying to be helpful.

Neal felt his face spasm and tighten, he swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood up, hissing through gritted teeth as pain exploded in his side.

"You shouldn't –" the girl protested, but he ignored her.

"Where is she?"

"Up there," Mulan pointed. He looked to where she was indicating and saw her standing a distance away on the top of some stone steps. It was her; there couldn't be any doubt of that. The same dark, wildly curly hair, the cat like eyes.

"You've got to be kidding me –"

He stormed over. She was standing where Mulan had stood minutes before and at the sound of his voice she turned.

"Doctor?" Neal snapped, viciously. "Are you serious?"

She rolled her eyes. "I thought the logistics of 'reporter' would escape the happy-tree-folk."

"How about life-ruiner? Do you know what you almost did in Storybrooke? What you almost exposed?"

"Well it doesn't matter now, does it?" she hissed. "Because we're _stuck _here in some magical fairytale land…with _them_." She gestured wildly at the lone figures of Mulan, Aurora and Philip.

Neal pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration, trying to keep his voice level. "They have _names_….they're _people_ with feelings and thoughts and emotions. They aren't characters in a book!" Maria opened her mouth to argue but he forced on. "Your job is to deal with the facts, right? Look at what's right in front of you. They're just trying to help us."

He looked at her and thought she was going to faint. All the color had left her face and she was standing with her spine curiously rigid. For a moment, Neal contemplated whether to catch her or not if she _did _faint – she wasn't his problem – but then he understood the loss of blood from her cheeks for what it was. It was, paradoxically, Maria's way of blushing, of betraying shame or doubt.

Neal studied her. He looked at the sky, the land. "Do you know where we are? What happened? This is the Enchanted Forest."

"You're full of shit." It lacked conviction, so he ignored it. She was a smart woman. She knew what had happened.

"You didn't have anything to do with all of…this, did you?" he said, after a while.

"With what?"

"Greg and Tamara."

Her mouth tightened. "They set me up. Before I understood what was happening it was too late."

He remembered vividly the moment in which he realized that Jane Porter was actually Maria Kaufmann, finally confronting this woman who had always been on the periphery for the past week in her room. The struggle. The realization of why she was in town.

But if he disliked Maria, he hated Tamara. "They won't get away with it," he reassured her, " - with whatever they're planning."

"Oh, I know," Maria said, coolly, she returned to running her eyes over the land around them with a burning intensity. "Someone has to pay, Neal. Someone always pays."

* * *

**A/N **Please review!

_Last Of The Lilac Wine_


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